- Influences:
- Existential Philosophers
- Freudian Psychology
- Alfred Adler Individual Psychology
- Contemporary existential therapist
- Believed the goal of psychotherapy should encompass assisting individuals to discover their meaning of life.
- Be concerned with problems of being rather than solving the problem.
Striving for Identity & Relationship to Others
- Writings:
- recognizing & dealing with power
- acknowledging freedom & responsibility
- discovering one's identity
- These helped translate existential concepts into psycho therapeutic process.
- Developed existential approach to psychotherapy that addresses Ultimate Human Concerns:
1. Freedom & Responsibility
2. Existential Isolation
3. Meaninglessness
4. Death
- Courage to be (facing anxiety)
- Experience of loneliness
- Experience of Relatedness
- Struggling With Our Identity
- Contemporary Existential Psychotherapy
- Therapy should be designed based on clients unique life experience.
Frankl on Existential Philosophy
youtube.com/watch?v=aQbxRkXzTjg
- Mainly focused his efforts on helping clients examine their answers to life's existential questions and encourage revision of their answers so they can live a more authentic life.
- Coined term: Existential-Humanistic
- challenged the traditional view of labeling and diagnosing clients
- Developed intervention to help clients deepen their inner exploration
School :
Techniques
Logo Therapy
Trapped in doing mode instead of being mode
Conceptual Foundations
- Capacity for Self-Awareness
- Freedom choice & Responsibility is the foundation of self-awareness
1. Challenging clients to claim responsibility for actions
2. Help clients mindfulness within self and with others
3. Assist clients in identifying hindrances to fuller presence
- Therapists share reaction to clients to deepen therapeutic relationship.
4. Encourage clients to choose more expanding ways of being in our daily lives
Goals
- Areas of Awareness
- Time is finite
- Inaction is a decision
- We create our own destiny
- We are basically alone
Definition
- People have free will and make their own destiny.
3 Values
1. Freedom to become
2. Capacity to reflect
3. Capacity to act
Existential Therapy
- Inauthenticity (vs. authenticity), Existential Guilt, Authenticity
- Awareness
- Self-Actualization
- Increased Responsibility
- Acceptance of core conditions of life
- Create and find meaning in life
The humanistic school of thought emphasizes the study of the whole person.
- Finding life meaning is important.
- Anxiety is based on core life conditions.
- People are free.
- Phenomenological (subjective/individualistic experience)
- Strive for authenticity
- Recognize self-deception
- Confront anxiety
- Engage in action to create worthy purpose
- Increase clients awareness of alternate possibilities that exist but were not previously recognized
Phases
Arielle Teets, Lauren Messina, Corey Pulford, Amanda Pantalone, & Haley Nelson
1.
- Identify & clarify assumptions of the world
- Values, beliefs, and assumptions are examined to determine their validity
2.
- Assessing source & authority of present value system
- Leads to new insight & restructuring of attitudes & values
3.
- Helping people take what they are learning about themselves & put it into action
- Transformation is not limited to what happens during therapy hour
Discussion
- Problem: discarding old (or imposed) values but not replacing them
- Meaninglessness-finding purpose in life
- Existential Neurosis: the experience of meaninglessness
- Existential Vacuum: meaninglessness can lead to this
- Creating new meaning
Major Theorists
- Existential Anxiety- unavoidable result of being confronted with the "givens" of life- death, freedom, choice, isolation, and meaninglessness
- Normal Anxiety- appropriate response to facing an event
- Neurotic Anxiety- about concrete things that is out of proportion to the situation
- What were some aspects of this counseling session that went well?
- What aspects of this counseling session could be improved?
- What are some advantages of Existential therapy for the client? Disadvantages?
- What difficulties that some clients could be facing would be situations in which existential therapy would be ad advantageous choice?
- What are some aspects of this therapeutic process that specifically interest you or stand out to you? Any aspects you find unappealing?
- His core ideas are still in the development of Existential Therapy.
- His experience in Auschwitz confirmed his views:
"the essence of being human lies in searching for meaning and purpose"
Awareness of Death & Non-being
1. Life has meaning.
2. Will to meaning.
3. Freedom to find meaning.
4. Integrate body, mind, & spirit.
- Death gives significance to life
- Developed Logo Therapy:
- Emphasized the concepts of freedom, responsibility, meaning, and search for value.
- Therapy through meaning
- His life is a testament to his theory because he lived what his theory supported.
Corey, G. (2017) Theory And Practice
Of Counseling And Psychotherapy. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Halbur, D.A., & Halbur K.V. (2011)
Developing Your Theoretical Oreintation In Counseling And Psychotherapy. Boston, MA: Pearson